Coleg Sir Gar

I am currently working on my final pieces ready for the show. There is only a matter of weeks left and much to do. I am painting, which is something i am not used to. I have always worked with mixed media, but i am begining to fall in love with paint. I look forward to continuing to explore it once the course is over and find my own style and visual aid.

At the moment i am painting from my polaroid images. The photos are greyscale but there is so much depth in colour that i intend to enritch it to show its potential.

I am enjoying the subject. I have always been fasinated by memory and human behaviour, and i am intrigued by our ability to avoid the ‘unconventional’ and consider it to be ‘ugly’. Why do we feel a need to brand beauty and ugly? I aim to discover the potential of beauty in the most unlikly of places. To celebrate and draw attention to the things that remain unnoticed and unseen.

It is such a wide project and i feel i will not be able to cover as large an area as i would like in the time i have left. But i am sure that i will continue to explore this concept after University.

I wanted to take the imagery from the polaroids into paint. This is my first attempt on a 3foot by 3foot canvas.

The painting needs changing a little and the colour needs to be altered. I will upload fresh images when its finished.

Other Polaroids exploring the hidden potential of beauty in the ordinary. I have double exposed some of the images to the sun light, the effect of this varies depending on how Bright that particular day was.

Light is very important in my work. What is a photograph but light reflected through a camera lens to create an image. What is a painting but light reflected of an object and bounced back to the eye. Everything we see is a perception that is created and projected through a light source, therefor i think it is important to acknowledge this when considering human perception.

I found a group on abandoned barns and out houses near my home town. I walked around and found so much opportunity to enhance beauty in its most basic of forms. Light from a window in a dark room, or roof tiles piled up in a barn window. I wanted to capture these moments in time that have been lost. When we take a photo, we acknowledge the importance of that moment, or that object etc. We take a photo to document the moment of importance so that it may be acknowledged by other and therefore can never be lost.

If we consider this, then the photography demonstrates value before we even comprehend the visuals.

There is almost a sexuality to the image. They are seductive and entice the viewer. The bleached out process creates an almost dream like state like a distant memory. Its faded qualities would help to allude to this.

I believe that the Polaroid photography is the strongest part of my work for the final project. However, i would like to explore the idea of taking these images into paint. I am very interested in Prunella Clough and her ability to capture a quiet beauty within the industrial and urban landscape. Her work is subtle and unassuming of its quality and so her paintings develop an idea that suggests a ‘potentail’ of beauty within the mundane.

It’s that time… the final major project. I have always found an interest in the unseen and unnoticed within the Welsh landscape. In the past, my work was nature based. However, i have discovered a new interest in the abandonment of old buildings.

A building is a container. It contains people, it contains peoples possesions and it contains moments of a persons life.

But what happens when a building is abandoned? The life that was once inside is distinguished and the house is left to sleep. But fractured memories can sometimes be found inside.

Im fasinated by our ability to avoid something that has been left to ruin. But there are still elements of a quiet and unnasuming beuaty, a hidden quality that when searching, can be found. I want to celebrate this potential of beauty in its most understated form, in an attempt to change the spectators perception when viewing the most ordinary and mundane scenes within the everyday life.